With Reno still asleep, Mir chose to cross the channel once more. The flat area occupied by the eucalyptus trees wasn’t really a good place to hide. Anyone journeying through the wide channel into the sacred ground would be able to see them there.
On the other bank of this wide channel, catkins had grown wildly. Almost taller than Mir in many areas, this place was a much better hiding spot, not to mention, it was a wide, expansive land that could lead one towards both the gateway station and to the deeper regions of the sacred ground. Mir could choose to escape in either direction in the worst case scenario.
Mir dragged the raft up close to the bank and carried Reno under a thick clump of catkins. Someone lying here wouldn’t be visible from the channel or the junction of the streams.
Giving him one last kick in the sheen to see if it produces any result, a disappointed Mir had to return back to the bank where he had left the raft. This thing had to be hidden somewhere. But he alone couldn't drag it up to the bank and hide it within the clustered catkins. It was too heavy for that.
Mir recalled the scene where their pursuers had drowned the unknown person. Hmm...
He walked along the edge of the bank and began to collect large rocks submerged in the water. The heavier, the better. Carrying the rocks back to the raft, he piled them up on the raft, slowly, gradually making it sink deeper and deeper into the shallow waters.
After over two dozen rocks had been put on top of the raft, it disappeared entirely from the surface of the water, stuck on the soil four feet below.
By the time he was done, the sun had already come above the eastern horizon, spreading its light across the terrain mercilessly. Had the jacket not protected every inch of his body, Mir was certain that he'd be sporting several red stripes on his body by now.
As soon as the thought occurred to him, a reckless idea took shape in his mind. Right now, the extent of viral infection in his body was too low. Every time he drank the contaminated honey to increase his stats, he would have to rely on the diary's influence to strengthen his mental fortitude to avoid accidents. This would create a paradoxical chain, because the diary's usage would expel the virus from his body. Instead of helping him increasing his stats, usage of the diary would actually decrease most his stats, especially the ones related to the viral infection.
But the sunlight was another massive source to increase the count of active virus inside his body, albeit being too uncontrollable in its scope. Normal consumption of contaminated food could supply active viruses directly, but compared to what exposure to sunlight could do to a human body, this supply of active virus was negligible.
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The sunlight was the catalyst that activated all the inactive viruses in a living organism. It kickstarted their life cycles, making them enter a frenzied active state. There was no controlling this process. One could just put a stop to it by wearing full body jackets or entering the shielded regions in the cities.
Now that he needed to be infected by the virus as severely as possible, Mir could use the sunlight to his advantage!
But this plan was still too risky. He sent a message to Murray to ask for his opinion and focused on the present situation.
Making sure to leave some small signs to locate where exactly the raft was hidden, Mir quickly disappeared from the bank and carried Reno deeper into the cluster of catkins. He was tempted to leave this guy behind, but his conscience still disagreed.
After a laborious search that lasted half an hour, he found a pretty good hiding spot amidst the labyrinth of white and green. An ancient fishing boat was lying hundreds of meters away from the channel, surrounded by some strange looking vegetations that had kept the catkins away. Mir had to wonder how or why a fishing boat had been moved so far away from the river in a place like this. To get repaired, maybe?
The fishing boat had a gaping hole at its bottom where the propellers should have been attached. Entering inside through that opening, Mir found himself in a tight space. It must have been a luxurious one before its ruination, because the design of the room and its furniture here looked usable even after such a long time.
A tiny kitchen in a corner, a dirty mattress in the center, a cracked, but wide computer display that must have been used for entertainment purposes, and two sofas took up the entire space. The floor appeared to be surprisingly clean, and Mir realized why soon enough.
There was a modern communicator on the mattress! He recognized the model at a glance. Blactech's last year's flagship model, priced at 3,000 units, this device was almost as expensive as the license to enter the sacred ground!
Someone must have been here recently. That was the reason why everything seemed so neat and clean. Otherwise, insects and reptiles would have welcomed him in a frenzy the moment he had set his foot inside.
But why would this predecessor of his leave his communicator behind?
Mir quickly checked if it could be activated or not. The battery displayed a 3% charge, but there was a fingerprint lock to prevent him from checking who this device belonged to.
The battery charge indicated that it had been a while since the owner had left the device here. Since the device wasn’t on standby mode, the departure of the owner might not have been intentional. He could either return any moment now...or he could be dead. In a place so perilous, the latter might be as plausible as the former possibility.
Regardless, Mir didn’t want to be around anyone for now. He wasn’t naive enough to think that any random person he'd meet inside the sacred ground would help him, would defend him in case the hunters from the Ravensworth family attacked. The opposite could happen too, heck, the opposite was more likely to happen. The other party might just help his enemies in exchange for some benefits.
Mir quickly retuned outside where he had laid Reno down...only, Reno wasn’t there.
"...Fuck."
Cursing gloomily, Mir looked around his surroundings, feeling lost and terrified. In all four directions, tall catkin groves greeted his sight. There was no sign of intrusion nearby, and he had certainly not heard any sounds of movement outside while he had entered the boat. Reno wouldn’t just run away if he had woken up. Even their backpacks were here, laid right beside where Reno had been sleeping. Something was terribly, terribly amiss.
Why did Reno's disappearance feel like it resembled the disappearance of the previous occupant of this boat? No signs of forced entry or departure...just a person missing while his possessions remained intact.